As Rosh Hashanah and the 25th anniversary of 9/11 coincide, Israel enters an election season with every reason to argue and every reason to remember what has endured.
Israel enters 5787 scarred by nearly three years of war and division, yet stronger, more capable, and more deserving of national confidence than our daily politics often allow us to feel.
Rosh Hashanah arrives this year at an unusual junction. Friday marks 25 years since the September 11 terrorist attacks. By sunset, Jews in Israel and around the world will begin the new year.
Americans remember September 11 as a day when complacency was shattered in a few terrible hours. They also remember what followed: strangers helping strangers, political differences briefly shrinking, and a society discovering reserves of courage it had forgotten it possessed. That unity did not last. Few moments of national unity ever do.
Israel learned its own version of that lesson on October 7, 2023. The failures of that day will take years of investigation and accountability to address. Yet the response revealed something equally important.
Israelis who had spent the previous year demonstrating against one another reported for reserve duty together. Communities opened homes to evacuees. Volunteers built supply networks overnight. Jews abroad raised money, came to Israel, and defended it publicly.
Nearly three years later, the emergency that began on October 7 is giving way to a different chapter. The wounds remain. Families mourn. Soldiers are still serving on dangerous fronts. Israel faces enemies that have neither disappeared nor abandoned their ambitions.
First Rosh Hashanah since October 7 attacks with no hostages in Gaza
Still, this Rosh Hashanah carries a fact worth stopping to appreciate: For the first time since the October 7 massacre, no hostage remains in Gaza. The last was brought home in January. The country fulfilled a basic obligation to bring its people back, living and dead.
That gives Israel room to begin asking what comes next. On October 27, Israelis will hold the first national election since the massacre. It will, and should, involve fierce arguments.
There is plenty to fight over: responsibility for October 7, Gaza, Iran, military service, religion and state, the courts, the economy, settlements, relations with the United States, and Israel’s relationship with the Jewish world.
These are real disagreements, and voters should demand real answers. The danger is allowing an election to persuade us that the people voting differently are themselves the problem.
Israel has spent too many years being told that everything depends on defeating the other half of Israel. The Right cannot build a country without the Left and Center. Secular Israelis cannot build it without religious Israelis. Haredim cannot separate their future from the wider Israeli public. Jewish Israelis cannot ignore the Arab citizens with whom they share this state. None of these groups is going anywhere after October 27.
Israeli society continued over past year despite political strife
That is also why this is a year to recover some Zionist confidence. Look at what has survived the past three years:
Children kept being born. Immigrants kept arriving. Hebrew culture kept producing music, books, television, arguments, and jokes. Researchers kept working. Businesses reopened. Communities began rebuilding. Reservists returned from months of service and went back to their families and jobs, often alongside people whose politics they cannot stand.
This is what sovereignty looks like in real life. It is noisy, exhausting, and frequently disappointing. It is also an achievement that generations of Jews could only imagine.
For Jews abroad, the past year has brought antisemitism, hostility toward Israel, and bitter arguments inside Jewish communities. Rosh Hashanah offers a chance to remember that the relationship between Israel and the Diaspora is larger than any Israeli government, American administration, or political dispute. We remain parts of one people, responsible for one another.
Zionism has survived wars, terrorism, diplomatic isolation, economic crises, and bitter internal divisions. It survived October 7. It will survive an election campaign.
5787 will contain an election, arguments, and probably more unpleasant surprises. The test is whether in a year from now, we will still recognize one another as partners in the same extraordinary enterprise: building and defending a Jewish state that remains democratic, confident, decent, and strong.
That is something worth believing in as the shofar sounds and a new year begins. Shana Tova.